"
"I have."
"And it's something dreadful, I know!" she said, wrinkling her brows
with a pretty terror. "Couldn't you pretend you had told it to me, and
let us go on just the same? Couldn't you, Kla'uns? Tell me!"
"I am afraid I couldn't," he said, with a sad smile.
"Is it about yourself, Kla'uns? You know," she went on with cheerful
rapidity, "I know everything about you--I always did, you know--and I
don't care, and never did care, and it don't, and never did, make the
slightest difference to me. So don't tell it, and waste time, Kla'uns."
"It's not about me, but about my wife!" he said slowly.
Her expression changed slightly
"Oh, her!" she said after a pause. Then, half-resignedly, "Go on,
Kla'uns."
He began. He had a dozen times rehearsed to himself his miserable story,
always feeling it keenly, and even fearing that he might be carried away
by emotion or morbid sentiment in telling it to another. But, to his
astonishment, he found himself telling it practically, calmly, almost
cynically, to his old playmate, repressing the half devotion and even
tenderness that had governed him, from the time that his wife, disguised
as the mulatto woman, had secretly watched him at his office, to the
hour that he had passed through the lines.
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